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Vietnam plans human bird flu vaccine tests

Posted on: Wednesday, 16 November 2005, 01:58 CST

By Ho Binh Minh

HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam, where bird flu has killed 42 people, will test a vaccine against the H5N1 virus in humans in early 2006 as long as it gets government and World Health Organization approval, a top health official said on Wednesday.

Pham Ngoc Dinh, deputy head of the National Hygiene and Epidemiology Institute, told Reuters Vietnam had started work on a human bird flu vaccine in early 2004 and had tested it successfully on chickens and monkeys.

A research group at his institute was planning human trials early next year, after submitting results of previous tests to the government and the WHO, he said.

"We are not sure if the Heath Ministry and the World Health Organization would allow us to conduct the test," Dinh told Reuters by telephone.

"We will try to do it," he said. "No scientists can be sure of the test success but we will have to do it."

The research group is using cell culture technology, which involves taking a deactivated or weakened form of the virus from a patient who had died of bird flu. The sample is then cultivated in monkey kidney cells, a process the group says can produce the best results within the shortest time.

Wednesday's state-run Tuoi Tre newspaper quoted Deputy Health Minister Trinh Quan Huan as saying the institute was completing the final stages of research before starting mass production of a human vaccine. He did not elaborate.

In March, Hoang Thuy Nguyen, head of the vaccine research group, said tests would be conducted on a small group of volunteers who could be members of the team.

Dinh said Vietnam was aware of WHO advice which said countries should not jump to production of a vaccine specifically against the H5N1 strain because the virus could mutate, changing in a way that makes the vaccine largely ineffective.

"Similar to other countries we take this advice but it does not mean that we would stop now," he said.

The virus remains hard for people to catch and is still essentially a disease in birds. But experts fear H5N1 could mutate into a form that passes easily among people, just like human influenza. If it does, millions could die because they would have little to no immunity.

Vietnam stepped up the slaughter of poultry in its two largest cities this week to try to stop the spread of bird flu, which has now been found in 13 of its 64 provinces in the latest wave of outbreaks, which started in early October.

Bird flu has killed at least 64 people in Southeast Asia since late 2003 and has become endemic in several countries.

Thirteen people are known to have died of bird flu in Thailand, five in Indonesia and four in Cambodia.

Source: REUTERS

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